Nobody's Child: How Older Women Say Good-Bye to Their Mothers

Rating:
Summary: Review of Diane Lutovich's Nobody's Child
Review: There are probably as many different mother-daughter relationships as there are mothers and daughters. Nevertheless, the 45 frank and articulate women Diane Lutovich interviewed for Nobody's Child span an amazingly wide range of the possibilities-from intensely close to bitterly estranged. How we deal with the loss of the person who gave us life involves, if we care to (and as many of these women did), summing up and evaluating our own lives as well as our mothers' and reflecting on the differences, the similarities and, most importantly, the connections. The book gives full value to the importance of grief even as it leads us (intentionally or not) to reflect on the issues, problems and joys each of with daughters (or sons) of our own face.

This is no glib, self-help guide that promises to lead us painlessly beyond a difficult life event. Beautifully written, humorous, poignant, it is rather like conversations one has only with one's most intimate and trusted friends. Lutovich, in working through her own experience and capturing those of others, shows us that there are many paths for finding and accepting what our mothers have meant to us, what they have given us, and how we carry on when they are gone.

Nobody's Child is a book not only for women who have lost or may soon lose their mothers, but for daughters who have had a troubled relationship with their mothers (or mothers with their daughters) and may want to do something about it before it is too late. Although its primary audience will most surely be women, I believe it contains many insights that would also benefit fathers and sons.

Rating:
Summary: Review of Diane Lutovich's Nobody's Child
Review: There are probably as many different mother-daughter relationships as there are mothers and daughters. Nevertheless, the 45 frank and articulate women Diane Lutovich interviewed for Nobody's Child span an amazingly wide range of the possibilities-from intensely close to bitterly estranged. How we deal with the loss of the person who gave us life involves, if we care to (and as many of these women did), summing up and evaluating our own lives as well as our mothers' and reflecting on the differences, the similarities and, most importantly, the connections. The book gives full value to the importance of grief even as it leads us (intentionally or not) to reflect on the issues, problems and joys each of with daughters (or sons) of our own face.

This is no glib, self-help guide that promises to lead us painlessly beyond a difficult life event. Beautifully written, humorous, poignant, it is rather like conversations one has only with one's most intimate and trusted friends. Lutovich, in working through her own experience and capturing those of others, shows us that there are many paths for finding and accepting what our mothers have meant to us, what they have given us, and how we carry on when they are gone.

Nobody's Child is a book not only for women who have lost or may soon lose their mothers, but for daughters who have had a troubled relationship with their mothers (or mothers with their daughters) and may want to do something about it before it is too late. Although its primary audience will most surely be women, I believe it contains many insights that would also benefit fathers and sons.